Fiz Posted August 12, 2012 Share Posted August 12, 2012 Oh dear! Too much pop and not enough content, in my humble opinion... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ann Williams Posted August 12, 2012 Share Posted August 12, 2012 DID Darcey appear at all? I sat through most of the dross only to fall asleep just before the end - have now woken up (12.20 am on Monday 13th) to see the show being reported on BBC news without any mention of Darcey or the RB! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruce Wall Posted August 12, 2012 Share Posted August 12, 2012 (edited) Yes, she did. Although it was impossible to fathom much from the segment. Had to smile when the BBC reported that the RB had '200 ballerinas' ..... All that and a 15% cut in subsidy .... An Olympian slight of hand if there ever was one. It was truly a 'happy and glorious' games ... Only it was the sport that offered the real theatre; the real choreography ... and that is exactly as it should be ... and where the heart deserved to be lodged in remembrance of this event. Edited August 12, 2012 by Meunier 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shirley Posted August 12, 2012 Share Posted August 12, 2012 Great to see Johnny Cope up there as well 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jan McNulty Posted August 12, 2012 Share Posted August 12, 2012 I found it a bit patchy depending on whether I liked the act or not. Overall I enjoyed it, especially seeing the competitors enjoying themselves. I think it should have finished with Take That though! Favourite moment was right at the end seeing Mo with one of the lit-up bowler hats on! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Mallinson Posted August 12, 2012 Share Posted August 12, 2012 And her fourth partner was, of course, Jonny Cope. She appeared as a flaming phoenix out of the sky. All very silly, and all that the '200 Royal Ballet dancers' girls did was stand on pointe, smile and wiggle. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jan McNulty Posted August 12, 2012 Share Posted August 12, 2012 I still think they should have used BRB's Faster! 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anjuli_Bai Posted August 13, 2012 Share Posted August 13, 2012 Congratulations to everyone who worked so hard to have this huge event come off so well. During the marathon which went through the streets of London there were some marvelous overhead shots. The short documentaries of pictures of different parts of the country were very beautiful, too. I loved it (though I never did get to see any dressage). So many dedicated athletes from all over the world - they are all winners. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jacqueline Posted August 13, 2012 Share Posted August 13, 2012 I sat up 'late'to watch the ballet segment and have to say I was very disappointed. It got off to a flying start, literally, but went downhill fast thereafter. Darcey seemed to do little but be moved through a series of lifts and the piece as a whole could have been danced by anyone.I was hoping they might come up with something to rival the Khan piece in the opener, perhaps something thoughtful based around the extinguishing of the flame and a chance to showcase what the RB can do with decent choreography.Perhaps it missed something in translation to the small screen, I don't know.If it was all terribly meaningful, I'm afraid it passed me by, although I do get the Phoenix imagery, but it was all back to front wasn't it? Anyway, the rest of the show was an endurance test for me but that sort of thing is subjective. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lisa O`Brien Posted August 13, 2012 Share Posted August 13, 2012 I don`t think Darcey Bussell should have danced that particular piece of choreography. You could tell she hadn`t danced for a while. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mijosh Posted August 13, 2012 Share Posted August 13, 2012 After the ecstasy of the games came the agony of the closing ceremony.Ghastly! I could hardly bring myself to watch and most certainly would have preferred not to listen,but I stuck it out just to get a glimpse of Darcey et al.I needn't have bothered.However I was amused and somewhat startled to hear the terminally boring Huw Edwards announcing Ms Bussell and "200 hundred dancers from the Royal Ballet." Won't Kevin be pleased when he comes back from his hols to find this balletic bonanza awaiting him! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jellybeans Posted August 13, 2012 Share Posted August 13, 2012 I am afraid that I have to agree that it was underwhelming! It is great that ballet was represented but what a missed opportunity to showcase all that is good about it! And can anyone throw any light on where these 200 "RB" dancers actually came from? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jacqueline Posted August 13, 2012 Share Posted August 13, 2012 I agree. Some of the lifts were rather wobbly and Darcey seemed to be moving quite carefully, as though she were afraid of injury or was a bit stiff. I have posted elsewhere on this so I won't bore with repetition, but I have since seen an interview with the producers/designers/whatever of the closing ceremony and they are quoted as saying they didn't want to overthink what they would do. Presumably, they decided to go the other way! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alison Posted August 13, 2012 Share Posted August 13, 2012 Great to see Johnny Cope up there as well Oh, so that's who it was. I did wonder if he'd be involved, but having to watch it on a screen the size of my laptop made it pretty difficult to recognise the men in those outfits. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Circe Posted August 13, 2012 Share Posted August 13, 2012 The closing ceremony didn't match the opening for style and subtance and the ballet was a disappointment but great that it did have a slot ( albeit a very late one!). I didn't like the freestyle disco-style outfits at all. The dancers ,I believe, came from all over Uk as I heard that someone from our local ballet school was in it and I saw an advert earlier in the year for pointe dancers for the ceremony. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Mallinson Posted August 13, 2012 Share Posted August 13, 2012 Gary Avis has put a photo on Twitter showing Darcey Bussell and her four squires alongside Christopher Wheeldon and Alastair Marriott. Can we assume that they choreographed this three minute piece of nonsense? Seems to me that, apart from the extreme difficulty of making something sensible given the constraints of time and the cruciform stage area, the metaphor was wrong and didn't work. A brilliant example of one that did work is the Olympic cauldron: 204 separate flames coalescing into one and then, at the end of the games, separating again as the teams dispersed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alison Posted August 13, 2012 Share Posted August 13, 2012 Well, Wheeldon certainly did, that was announced some time ago. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jan McNulty Posted August 13, 2012 Share Posted August 13, 2012 Still think they should have used BRB's "Faster"! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
loveclassics Posted August 13, 2012 Share Posted August 13, 2012 According to today's Times, it was 300 dancers from the Royal Ballet! Kevin will have his work cut out next season... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elliepops Posted August 13, 2012 Share Posted August 13, 2012 Huw Edwards obviously didn't read his programme which clearly listed the pro (paid) performers last night and the volunteers (unpaid). In the ballet section approx 10% were paid pros who were also dancing in other segments, the rest approx 200 were volunteers aged 16 and up who auditioned and 16 royal ballet school students with about the same number of dancers from English National Ballet Company. Christopher Wheeldon choreographed Darcey and the boys, Alastair Marriott and Jonathan Howells choreographed the corp de ballet. The original choreo for the corps was more involved and had more difficulty, however the early rehearsals were on a flat sound stage. Once the staging was built it became clear that due to the steep angle of the ramps where the girls would be dancing that certain elements were not going to be possible or safe to perform, a lot adjustment was needed just to keep the feet underneath you and not slide away, likewise balance was more difficult as nothing was flat horizontal. There were elements incorporated to be effective as viewed from above (the view most of the stadium seating had) and for the aerial cameras.The final staging surface was slippery to dance on even with extra grit laid down.The big concern for most of the dancers was keeping their shoes on as the extreme slope and the fabric of the costume meant the shoe heels kept slipping off (I think the only method not employed last night to keep the shoes on was staple gunning them to their feet ). People who are more knowledgable about ballet may well feel the work was simple, and it was necessarily so, also the choreographers recognised that for the much wider audience the spectacle of hundreds of dancers doing bourree is impressive - in one rehearsal the girls were told - the bourrees are the easy bit, we all know that, but for the ordinary public it's "wow they are all on their toes". Having watched the rehearsals the tv editing was awful and the effect I think was hoped for was almost completely lost except in the stadium, the two elements really needed to be seen as a whole together.There was a sequence at the end where the corps flood down towards the cauldron and that was lost as the tv camera angle shown was pointing the opposite way. My 16 year old had the time of her life, has a day she will never forget, met and danced (or wiggled ) with some of her ballet idols and then mixed in and soaked up the atmosphere with all the athletes and will be in lots of athlete photo albums. Given the technical logistics involved in just getting everything needed set up in 16 hrs for something of that scale and then run a show with some elements that didn't get a run through at the stadium and no major mishaps happening is a miracle in my book. 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alison Posted August 13, 2012 Share Posted August 13, 2012 Elliepops, thank you very much for that inside information. I must admit that, sitting at the mercy of the TV cameras, I wondered how much we'd missed. Given the technical logistics involved in just getting everything needed set up in 16 hrs for something of that scale and then run a show with some elements that didn't get a run through at the stadium and no major mishaps happening is a miracle in my book. Indeed. I was horrified when I realised they hadn't had time for a full run-through on-site, and was praying that nobody got injured - that surface did look horribly shiny. I was also wondering things like how the glare of the lighting in the stadium would affect them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beryl H Posted August 13, 2012 Share Posted August 13, 2012 Thought the evening as a whole was marvellous, the BBC highlights programme before captured the mounting exhilaration , the actual ceremony went on too long (like the opening) I seemed to like the stars who were not there (John Lennon, David Bowie, Kate Bush, Freddie Mercury )more than those present but I gave up at 11.15, look foward to actually seeing Darcey Bussell and others tonight in my recording, glad she did take part. , Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Mallinson Posted August 13, 2012 Share Posted August 13, 2012 Having watched the rehearsals the tv editing was awful and the effect I think was hoped for was almost completely lost except in the stadium, the two elements really needed to be seen as a whole together.There was a sequence at the end where the corps flood down towards the cauldron and that was lost as the tv camera angle shown was pointing the opposite way. My 16 year old had the time of her life, has a day she will never forget, met and danced (or wiggled ) with some of her ballet idols and then mixed in and soaked up the atmosphere with all the athletes and will be in lots of athlete photo albums. Great to hear that your daughter was taking part and had a good time. I certainly got the feeling that it would have looked much better in the stadium than on tv. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alison Posted August 13, 2012 Share Posted August 13, 2012 For anyone who has access to iPlayer, the ballet section starts at approximately 2:55: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01m1l2q/Olympic_Ceremonies_London_2012_Closing_Ceremony/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fiz Posted August 13, 2012 Author Share Posted August 13, 2012 The Ballet Bag on Twitter is asking the dancers who took part in it to give them their names so they can compile a list of those taking part. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toursenlair Posted August 13, 2012 Share Posted August 13, 2012 For anyone who has access to iPlayer, the ballet section starts at approximately 2:55: http://www.bbc.co.uk...osing_Ceremony/ only for those in the UK alas. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toursenlair Posted August 13, 2012 Share Posted August 13, 2012 (edited) backstage rehearsal video here: <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/OGkPAsCXQos?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> ok why didn't embed work this time? Here's the link Edited August 13, 2012 by toursenlair 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Irmgard Posted August 13, 2012 Share Posted August 13, 2012 Thanks to toursenlair for posting the rehearsal clip and for Elliepops's report. It is not only Huw Edwards who did not read the programme - a review on bbc.co.uk this morning said exactly the same thing, that all the dancers were from the Royal Ballet! The photographs posted on Facebook by my friends in ENB show fantastic make-up that was lost on camera as the whole thing appeared to be a fuzzy mess to me! It was certainly a long wait to see the ballet - I was beginning to think it might have appeared in the pre-show! I suppose it is understandable that the camerawork was so bad if there was no rehearsal in the actual stadium (cameras for the opening ceremonies were given plenty of chances to rehearse!). The ENB girls certainly enjoyed themselves on what was officially the first day of their holiday and can chalk up another Olympic experience, having danced a segment of "Swan Lake" on two occasions for the Gymnastics on the very spongy floormat and in between performances at the Coliseum! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alison Posted August 13, 2012 Share Posted August 13, 2012 only for those in the UK alas. That's cos we pay for it (or some of us do, anyway. I think the BBC will ultimately have to move away from iPlayer being a free service otherwise there won't be enough people paying the licence fee to cover costs). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jan McNulty Posted August 13, 2012 Share Posted August 13, 2012 If you have a PC and internet access you are obliged to have a television licence. This has been the case for at least 3 years. http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check/index.aspx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Mallinson Posted August 13, 2012 Share Posted August 13, 2012 If you have a PC and internet access you are obliged to have a television licence. This has been the case for at least 3 years. http://www.tvlicensi...heck/index.aspx For live broadcasts, not for iPlayer repeats. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tendumom Posted August 13, 2012 Share Posted August 13, 2012 Thanks so much for the rehearsal clip! Those of us in the US did not get to see any of it! I watched the delayed prime time broadcast because I did not have access to the live streaming. Our NBC network decided that the US did not need to see any of the ballet at all! The only reason I made a conscious decision to try to see the Closing Ceremonies was to see Darcey Bussell! So frustrating. Can't any videos online that can be watched in the US yet either. Hmm.. will have to get my dd in Russia to download them so I can see them eventually. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alison Posted August 13, 2012 Share Posted August 13, 2012 Couldn't spot anything on YT earlier, certainly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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